Chapter 31

Chapter 14

STRONG OF PURPOSE

The sexton-task of piling earth above John Harmon all night long,
was not conducive to sound sleep; but Rokesmith had some
broken morning rest, and rose strengthened in his purpose. It was
all over now. No ghost should trouble Mr and Mrs Boffin's peace;
invisible and voiceless, the ghost should look on for a little while
longer at the state of existence out of which it had departed, and
then should for ever cease to haunt the scenes in which it had no
place.

He went over it all again. He had lapsed into the condition in
which he found himself, as many a man lapses into many a
condition, without perceiving the accumulative power of its
separate circumstances. When in the distrust engendered by his
wretched childhood and the action for evil--never yet for good
within his knowledge then--of his father and his father's wealth on
all within their influence, he conceived the idea of his first
deception, it was meant to be harmless, it was to last but a few
hours or days, it was to involve in it only the girl so capriciously
forced upon him and upon whom he was so capriciously forced,
and it was honestly meant well towards her. For, if he had found
her unhappy in the prospect of that marriage (through her heart
inclining to another man or for any other cause), be would
seriously have said: 'This is another of the old perverted uses of
the misery-making money. I will let it go to my and my sister's
only protectors and friends.' When the snare into which he fell so
outstripped his first intention as that he found himself placarded
by the police authorities upon the London walls for dead, he
confusedly accepted the aid that fell upon him, without
considering how firmly it must seem to fix the Boffins in their
accession to the fortune. When he saw them, and knew them, and
even from his vantage-ground of inspection could find no flaw in
them, he asked himself, 'And shall I come to life to dispossess
such people as these?' There was no good to set against the
putting of them to that hard proof. He had heard from Bella's own
lips when he stood tapping at the door on that night of his taking
the lodgings, that the marriage would have been on her part
thoroughly mercenary. He had since tried her, in his own
unknown person and supposed station, and she not only rejected
his advances but resented them. Was it for him to have the shame
of buying her, or the meanness of punishing her? Yet, by coming
to life and accepting the condition of the inheritance, he must do
the former; and by coming to life and rejecting it, he must do the
latter.

Another consequence that he had never foreshadowed, was the
implication of an innocent man in his supposed murder.